Tags
CAPE TOWN, elegy, Humanity, philosophical, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, postmodern, South Africa, South African, wordplay, writing
26 Sunday Nov 2023
Posted CAPE TOWN, Mountain, Poem, Poem from ZERO GRAVITY (my collection), Poet, poetry, Poetry, Poetry, South African, University, wordplay, writing
in20 Thursday Jul 2023
Posted Aging, CAPE TOWN, Life, Metamorphosis, Poem, Poet, poetry, Poetry, Poetry, postmodern, South African, Story, The ocean, The ocean, the sea, the sea, Uncategorized
inTags
Aging, identity, memory, philosophical, poem, poetry, South Africa, transformation, university of Cape Town, writing
PAROW
the main road
bisects the town
left
side
right side
upside
and down
almost straight as an arrow
barely curving
until it hits the mountain
straight as
the truth
you do
believe in
and that’s
adieu to this flat flat
piece of real estate
tough
little piece of raw lower
class
landscape
between the Hottentots-Holland and
Rondebosch garden
whose vaulting supremacies
did cut my
wisdom teeth on
flouncing around
in my red robe that most
intellectual
of days
not that
they would really let
me forget
I was scion of Parow
denizen of
sprayshop, scrapyard,
bottlestore and bazaar
longing for
False Bay coast line
and sleepy surf hollow
dreaming night dreaming
to the crash of
Indian Ocean waves
the odd great white
out there ploughing those waters
preserving
divine balance
still
listing and longing for
the pure
Poseidon of
that place
now
so far inland embracing
my life’s
semi-desert
remembering
Parow childhood
my 60s, 70s
ancient history
seems infinite the distance
from there where
once was
to
creature, strange soul,
typing this here
the main
road
still bisecting
now
and forever
13 Wednesday Jul 2022
CLOSE READING
she writes of her heartfelt
special experiences
growing up in an
iconic part
of Cape Town
which things
I myself cannot write
because I have not lived
them in any
size, shape or form
let alone exactly
and thus have neither
the kudos nor the authority
to be a poet
inside her canon
or any canon beside
the things I write
will never summon
busload upon busload
of fervent literary tourists
searching for an experience
which is pure ethnography
whose meaning is real
things I write
do not have
that kind of appeal
to not
admit to
this kind of close reading
see reality as a construct
would satirize
as fake, as false
as full
failure to conceive
19 Wednesday Jan 2022
THROUGH
I am munching
a Copenhagen
thinking of
Schrodinger’s equation
and what it means
for classical objects
such as an aging
munchkin like me
the
cat is
out of the bag
and may be
out of the box too
once the wavefront
is collapsing
Oh, quantum theory, has
me all at sea
floating out in that box
with my cat
wondering on the relative dimensions
of this ocean
unless somehow
I now find myself in deep space
cat
gone mousing, leaving me
to explore the limits
of human loneliness
alternate universe, alternative shoo-me-verse
where was
the alternate universe that
day decades ago
when
I nearly drowned or
nearly didn’t
very next day
in Cape Town harbour,
find myself in this strange
apartheid land
a former colony
(enough stuff here to lure the British, persuade
them to stay
diamonds and gold bubbling
up to the surface, or deep, deep underground
(my atomic number
is seventy-nine, born
on the seventy-ninth day
did I
not tell you this already? )
and now that
same sea which was traversed
edging up the scale, that couple of degrees hotter,
that odd millimeter or two higher
stuff melting at the poles
but let me
examine the light through a prism
see if it still
breaks into rainbow spectrum
the red and the blue
the light and the dark, still
battling, struggling to deal with
antagonism, difference, opposition
still so polarized
and yet the theory tells
us
everything is shared, connected
your atoms, quarks, electrons
and mine
in this universe or
some other one
practically the same.
I am munching a Copenhagen
took so long in space and time to
get through
no way
for that
taste to travel across, I guess
that space
to find portal through
23 Friday Jul 2021
Posted British, CAPE TOWN, Colonialism, Poem, Poet, poetry, Poetry, Poetry, satire, South African, Uncategorized
inTags
British Lions, Colonialism, poem, poetry, rugby, satire, South Africa
CHIZCUT
I drink my salty Bovril
last link to that old nationality
almost completely dissolved.
Tomorrow
the visiting Lions
meet the Springboks
white, black
the muscle of South Africa
focused, sharpened,
it has a point to prove
revenge to take
for all that time of subjugation
the huge, raw holes
you dug so deep
in soil
and rock
the wealth you took
the threads
you cut
Ah, yes, a tidy revenge
for the mess
you left here
chaos you engendered
turn that vaunted leonine Imperial mane
into something more fitting
I’m thinking
“chizcut”.
25 Wednesday Dec 2019
Posted British, CAPE TOWN, Colonialism, Poem, Poet, poetry, Poetry, Poetry, South African, Uncategorized
inIMMIGRANT SONG
after drowning in the ship’s
swimming pool
I grew more distant
disowned the world
the day before disembarkation
the southern Sun greeting me
harbour under a mountain
that, for crimes against humanity,
had been decapitated
(ancient glacier slicing like
a katana
sharper than any razor)
and so
we we here
detritus of the power
that used to the rule the place
at the height of its ambitions
coming back from
the dead
so hard on
my family
my death-knowing eyes
seeing through everything
knowing the secret of our sudden
redemption, elevation
but not yet
owning the content
of the death conversation
what
was down there
so eager to talk
so eager to touch base
and
for my life’s return
setting
absolute conditions
no room with that
power to
negotiate
every human liberation
a life or death matter
an issue of
sacrifice
and absolute faith
30 Thursday Aug 2018
MAYDAY
Mrs May
Mrs May
(what is a politician
if not
repetition?)feeling
comfortable in
the cell of
Mandelathinks it
a bit like
Disneyland
so enjoyablealways happy on
a small
even
smaller island
29 Wednesday Aug 2018
Posted British, CAPE TOWN, ENGLAND, Poem, Poet, poetry, Poetry, Poetry, political, Politics of poetry/writing/Literature, Prison, satire, South African, Uncategorized
inON ROBBEN ISLAND
WITH THERESA MAYhe who
isnot here
lefthis signature
on the rock, in
his cellon history
you who
are herehave come
to this spot
in your sunshine clothes
in tourist
capacityhistory watching
scrutinizing your
every moveno need for bars and bricks
and rocks to break
in your casestuff of history
that just disappears
18 Thursday Aug 2016
Dionysus
sent Mercury
to steal
my sword
(much collaboration
between gods
Greek
and Roman)
lie needed it
to bestow full Honours
on the Great Poets
of Cape Town
dismissing my protests
with a salutary warning
that I should be
grateful the
god left me
with weapon the pen
is absolutely not
more powerful than.
18 Thursday Aug 2016
Posted Academic, CAPE TOWN, Poem, Poet, poetry, Professorial, satire, South African, wordplay, writing
inSporus, the
parrot poet
professor
(Pope
of poets)
sat
on his perch
beneath a
famous mountain
somewhere
in the Southern
Hemisphere
partaking of 
his breakfast pumpkin seed.